LOOKING AGAIN AT the map, the traveller decided: “I’ll start from here.” Here is Matosinhos. Poor António Nobre, should he get lost here, en route to Leca. He’d die of anguish before the tuberculosis got him, just from surveying its factory chimneys, overwhelmed by their noise: even the traveller felt confused and concerned at his bustling surroundings. When all’s said and done, we have only ourselves to blame in attempting to read reality in books which can only register a very different order of reliability. There are many variations on the theme of sebastianismo1 and this is among the most insidious. The traveller vows not to disregard the warning.
Once in Matosinhos, you have to go and see the church of Bom Jesus and the Quinta do Viso. But the traveller, who can’t go everywhere, remained before the Nasoni, a perfect feat of architecture, of a broadly horizontal construction. Nasoni himself is wholly Italianate, but he understood the mysteries of Lusitanian granite which give it space on which to rest our eyes, alter-nating its dark granite tones with the chalkiness of the plaster. It is a lesson forgotten by latterday adulterators and the manufacturers of modern nightmares. The traveller is well aware that now it costs an unattainable fortune to build houses from granite, but given what one can and cannot achieve in balancing the books there should still be a solution compatible with an architectural tradition rather than venturing into its systematic assassination. It was horrific.
Outside in the eviscerated gardens some rough shrines still remain, containing old and routine versions of the Way of the Cross. This almost passes the traveller’s understanding: the difficulty men have in comprehending good things and the ease with which they repeat the bad. Inside the church there remain worthwhile pieces of sculpture, including a St Peter made of Ança stone. With such a good example in front of their eyes, what kind of models would potters choose, given not an ounce of sensitivity in their fingertips? A question like this has no answer, but the traveller is already well accustomed to the situation.
From Matosinhos to Santa Cruz do Bispo is only a short hop. The traveller goes in search of the São Brás mountain, home to a famous sculpture of a marvellous man armed with a heavy mace, with a ferocious lion, now subdued and obedient, at his feet. Something like that demands a mountain, a wilderness, a mystery. But the traveller is wrong to romanticise like this. At the end of the day São Brás mountain was on the scale of a Nativity Crib, so well defended that it looked artificial, with its brave warrior a pathetic figure, legs nibbled by a little dog rolling at his feet begging for his tummy to be scratched. Instead of a wild and craggy country place, a caprice of nature well away from the haunts of men, the traveller encountered a piece of parkland suited to country picnics, still scattered with left-overs and old plastic bags. You know how these things are: the traveller sallies forth in the expectation that all will be his alone, and becomes offended if someone else anticipates his sights and pleasures. This bearded gentleman, who must be St Brás, is telling us he’s no Hercules, whatever certain ambitiously erudite men may have intended. He welcomes his many visitors here, being the patron saint of happiness, and instead of baring his teeth, the lion looks sideways at his master like a setter awaiting the hunter’s signal to be off. There are wine stains on St Brás’ head and shoulders: pilgrims aren’t selfish, they offer their saint the best they have, something to warm the blood and raise a smile. On consideration, the traveller is forced to confront his own selfishness, he wanted the statue to himself, or at most for only a select few, and he found a common saint who partakes of cheap wine and a placid lion who proffers his strong back to any young girl wanting to take a break between dances. Where should one look for a more harmonious scene? Humbled by the lesson, the traveller leaves the Man of the Mace to his struggle against time and the elements that are destroying him and continues on to Azurara, a land which lent its name to a chronicler who was probably never born there, just like our friend Damião, a reputed native of Góis, who was actually born in Alenquer. The parish church of Azurara stands close beside the main road, so the traveller had no excuse for not visiting it, other than that the sacristan had vanished without leaving any indication of where a key might be found. The traveller despairs, he’s not travelling in order for this to happen, but the parish church is a military fortress without breachable entry. He has to content himself with looking at it from outside, something not without its charms, and vowing to return.
In Vila do Conde, only a little further down the road, the traveller finds his reward. José Régio’s house is also closed, so the traveller has obviously hit on the wrong day, but at least there are compensations in the sinuously snaking streets of the fishermen’s quarter. In pursuing their way he comes across the hermitage of Senhor do Socorro, with its imposing chalky dome: it’s a popular temple set apart from the grander liturgies, and in its atrium, if that is the correct name for such a space, the fishermen mend their nets in the tumbling sunlight. There’s a general hubbub of gossip. One of the gossipers is called Delfim, a sound seaworthy name, and when the traveller approaches the wall, he can look down on the River Ave and the Sorriso da Vida and cannot ask for more: a river capable of flying and a boat with a name like that. The air holds a magnificent purity, without a puff of wind; matchless. The traveller bids Delfim and his companions farewell, descends to the lower town by dint of stairwells and steep alleys, ending up in the shipyard where they still build wooden boats, daring ensigns putting the secrets of the sea on view without permitting the traveller to decipher them properly. He has to remain content with scrutinising the design of the keels as they emerge from the water, and the arc of the crossbeams, inhaling the scent of serrated wood freshly planed with adzes. The traveller is under no illusion: just to learn the first letters of this alphabet, then to get to the next and the last, would take another lifetime. But although the traveller might know just a few of them, and is well able, for example, to read those inscribed upon a metal plate like a proclamation: WE LACK NEITHER WORK NOR THE WILL TO WORK. WHAT WE DEMAND ARE WORKING CONDITIONS. This was the point at which the traveller became aware of the lengthy journey he had already made. All the way from Rio de Onor to Vila do Conde, from the collective murmur to the openly candid written word, from the tops of mountains and the depths of valleys, come rain and fog or clear skies, on Douro’s terraces and in the shade of the pines, there was but a single Portuguese idiom.
Vila do Conde has much to tell us. Nonetheless, it’s the one community among all the cities, towns and villages boasting a pillory mounted with a sword, a figure of justice that doesn’t demand you to offer up your eyes as it doesn’t have any. It is simply an arm, attached to a vertical shaft, faithful support of a missing set of scales. The traveller puzzles over the owner of the arm and what the sword was there to slice. Justice perhaps, but of an enigmatic variety. The parish church has a Manueline2 doorway attributed to John of Castile. Its massive belfry dates from the seventeenth century. Sunk into the body of the church, it at once conceals and quenches it as it enhances it: at one and the same time it is excessive and complementary. The traveller, had he an opinion on such matters and sufficient strength in his arms, would have seized its solid weight and shoved it aside, in the manner of Giotto’s campanile, freestanding beside the church of Santa Maria dei Fiori in Florence. It’s an idea the traveller decided to bequeath to posterity, if one day there is the money to waste on like perfectionism. Once inside, don’t miss seeing the sixteenth-century “St John” who, as the patron saint, has another image set into the tympanum of the doorway, and also a sixteenth-century “Senhora da Boa Viagem”, holding a lugger or something resembling a ship in her right hand. She is the fishermen’s guardian, guardian to Delfim and his friends, happily still living.
The traveller then proceeds to the convent of St Clara. He takes a schoolboy for his guide, a lad called João Antero who’s already installed there, and with whom the traveller holds serious conversations on matters of his instruction and his teachers. The traveller still remembers the school-day torments he once suffered, as the magnificent Gothic church with its precious jewels fills him with profound compassion and avuncular affection. Other visitors are also touring the church, apparently more interested in testing the echoes than in opening their eyes. The little pupil is a sensitive soul and neglects their company in order to keep the traveller’s. In the Capela dos Fundadores lie the tombs of Dom Afonso Sanches, bastard son of the king Dom Dinis, and of his wife Dona Teresa Martins. They are two genuine jewels made of stone.
The traveller cannot stay longer. If he allows himself to get carried away, he will never leave, for the church is among the most beautiful sights that his eyes have thus far seen. Farewell, Vila do Conde.
Where the River Mau ran to find its name he cannot say. No waters run beside the inhabited bank, and only a little stream passes a kilometre further down: something so insignificant doesn’t deserve to be spoken ill of. And the Este, tributary of the Ave, flowing close beside it, takes its name from the cardinal point (“east”), another mystery that evinces the traveller’s curiosity. But the focus of interest here is less the river than the famous church of St Christopher, dating back to the twelfth century. Said to be of a piece with the Romanesque style of the region, this would be at one and the same time both a proper and a contemptuous description. What deserves most emphasis is, once again, the striking plasticity of the medium, an expressiveness achieved by the density of the material, the graphic weight of its superimposed blocks of stone, the multiple readings this gives rise to. If St Christopher on the Mau is truly such a simple church, then simplicity must constitute a direct route to aesthetic sensitivity, with the obvious consequence of achieving that breathtaking force which suddenly and simultaneously depresses and raises the traveller’s spirits. Although its extensive restoration is obvious to the naked eye, he remains unaffected by it this time, contrary to his usual reaction. Quite the opposite: rather than a ruin that his contemporaries who know about buildings would fail to recognise, he had before him a reworked reconstruction, successfully bringing yesterday into today. Once inside the church, the traveller felt as if he were in a time machine. And he’s also a space-traveller, that goes without saying. One of the capitals, which as anyone can see reproduces scenes from the Song of Roland, transports the traveller with lightning speed back to Venice. In the Doge’s Palace, in the corner of St Mark’s Square, and well tucked away there’s a porphyry statue known as The Tetrarchs. They are four warriors assuming a fraternal attitude, possibly of military camaraderie, yet with a subtle flavour of humanity. These tetrarchs of the River Mau are more warriors than men: in the true sense of the word they are men of arms. All in all the resemblance or, if you prefer it, the echo, is irresistible. The traveller marvels, betting that no-one else has ever made a like observation, and is well pleased with himself.
It’s only with the greatest difficulty that the traveller tears himself away from the River Mau. Churches as rustic as this are few and far between, but this particular rural idyll had employed a genius to work on the tympanum, sculpting the image of a crozier, by reputation the symbol of St Augustine, and his two more minor signs, a bird with the sun for a halo over his head, and what looks like a swaddled infant holding the moon in his raised hands. The traveller would exchange the Venus de Milo, the Belvedere Apollo and every metope in the Parthenon for it. As you can well understand, the traveller is really a rustic at heart.
The day declines into twilight. The traveller leaves the River Mau behind him and sets forth down the highway: if driving were not such a risky undertaking, he would travel with his eyes closed, the better to preserve the magnificent image of that tympanum. He heads towards Junqueira where he’d heard of a monastery called San Simão, although with little hope of finding it open at dusk, and little desire of finding someone to open up for him at the relatively late hour. Nonetheless the traveller has his little obsessions, one of which is to see with his own eyes, however fleetingly or with only a passing glance, the things which really matter to him. He has already visited one Junqueira in Trás-os-Montes, and is keen to know more of this one in Minho. He was about to learn. San Simão is nothing but a Baroque façade, its two belfries standing like bulrushes, nothing special and nothing in comparison with the River Mau, which he can’t get out of his mind. And the door, as he had anticipated, was locked.
Night was closing in, and the traveller was to spend it at Póvoa de Varzim, so it was time to be getting on there. But when he did, he found the door ajar, a sign offering the site for rent, and vegetation growing along the top of the wall. The silence there was absolute. Not a soul to be seen. The world was evidently about to end or to begin. No-one can be a traveller without being curious. The door half-ajar; the silence; such a deserted spot; he’d be mad or misdirected not to exploit the situation. He pushed a little at the door, cautiously, and peered inside. In fact the wall was not a wall, but only a narrow structure resting on the entrance arch. The traveller’s heart was pounding, the heart being the first organ to descry such things, and as if he had suddenly entered a dream, he entered and was suddenly within, on a wide path separating two entirely different gardens, one on his left at the foot of what had to be the old monastery, and the other on his right, segmented into tiny avenues bordered with recently-pruned boxwood. The other garden was raised a level, edged with balustrades, some trees of undistinguished appearance but here, on the lower level, seemingly constructed by gnomes so that fairies might pass by there, is the path trod by the traveller, near-intoxicated by the aroma exuded by the damp plants, perhaps even by the pruned boxwood, spikenard if this were in season, jasmine or hidden violets. The traveller finds himself trembling, he feels a lump rise in his throat, he wants someone to appear and nobody does: not even a dog barks. He takes a few more steps down the central avenue, having to hurry a little to avoid nightfall, and reaches a wide wooded place, low trees with a dense spread that makes a roof of vegetation he can almost touch with his hand. The forest floor is covered with leaves, a heavy cloak of them crunching under his feet. A light shines from another side of the monastery: one solitary lit window. The traveller feels desperate. He’s not afraid yet he trembles; nobody appears to scold him yet he’s almost in tears. He proceeds further, under a walled archway and, by almost the last light of day, he encounters a large orchard filled with fruiting trees with an aqueduct at the far end, paved paths, rose bowers and flowerbeds. On continuing he discovers an abandoned inn where the illuminated window must be, yes, absolutely has to be, Sleeping Beauty’s suite, no doubt, she being the sole possible inhabitant of such a mysterious place. A minute and then an hour passed, only a remnant of light remained, but night doesn’t dare advance, giving him time to return to the trees with their carpet of decaying leaves, the echoes of his footfalls, the minimalist garden, the scent of the earth. The traveller emerges, shutting the door as if closing it on a secret.
1. Sebastianismo is based on the mediaeval legend akin to our Arthurian one, of a saintly king (the fourteenth-century King Sebastian) bound to return and save his country at some unspecified future date.
2. Manueline architecture was typical of the reign of King Manuel I (1495–1521). This was Portugal’s great age of discovery, and the style combines elaborate late Gothic elements with seafaring decorations such as twisted ropes of stone and the armillary sphere, a globe in stone that became the emblem of Manuel I.